She was seated at the farther end of the room, and as she rose to meet him it chanced that her head, enveloped in its black travelling-hood, was relieved for a moment against the tarnished background of the broken mirror.  The impression struck a chill to his heart; but it was replaced by a glow of boyish happiness as their eyes met and he felt her hands in his.

For a moment all his thoughts were lost in the mere sense of her nearness.  She seemed simply an enveloping atmosphere in which he drew fresh breath; but gradually her outline emerged from this haze of feeling, and he found himself looking at her with the wondering gaze of a stranger.  She had been a girl of sixteen when they first met.  Twelve years had passed since then, and she was now a woman of twenty-eight, belonging to a race in which beauty ripens early and as soon declines.  But some happy property of nature—­whether the rare mould of her features or the gift of the spirit that informed them—­had held her loveliness intact, preserving the clear lines of youth after its bloom was gone, and making her seem like a lover’s memory of herself.  So she appeared at first, a bright imponderable presence gliding toward him out of the past; but as her hands lay in his the warm current of life was renewed between them, and the woman dispossessed the shade.

4.5.

Unpublished fragment from Mr. Arthur Young’s diary of his travels in
Italy in the year 1789.

October 1st.

Having agreed with a vetturino to carry me to Pianura, set out this morning from Mantua.  The country mostly arable, with rows of elm and maple pollard.  Dined at Casal Maggiore, in an infamous filthy inn.  At dinner was joined by a gentleman who had taken the other seat in the vettura as far as Pianura.  We engaged in conversation and I found him a man of lively intelligence and the most polished address.  Though dressed in the foreign style, en abbe, he spoke English with as much fluency as myself, and but for the philosophical tone of his remarks I had taken him for an ecclesiastic.  Altogether a striking and somewhat perplexing character:  able, keen, intelligent, evidently used to the best company, yet acquainted with the condition of the people, the methods of farming, and other economical subjects such as are seldom thought worthy of attention among Italians of quality.

It appeared he was newly from France, where he had been as much struck as myself by the general state of ferment.  Though owning that there was much reason for discontent, and that the conduct of the court and ministers was blind and infatuated beyond belief, he yet declared himself gravely apprehensive of the future, saying that the people knew not what they wanted, and were unwilling to listen to those that might have proved their best advisors.  Whether by this he meant the clergy I know not; though I observed he spoke favourably of that body in France, pointing out that, long before the recent agitations, they had defended the civil rights of the Third Estate, and citing many cases in which the country curates had shown themselves the truest friends of the people:  a fact my own observation hath confirmed.